


Sober Reflections

by Shellbacker



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Morning drinking, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 18:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8220967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shellbacker/pseuds/Shellbacker
Summary: After an eventful month on the island, Cullen and Old Longfellow sit down and discuss matters over their last bottle of whisky - then an unexpected visitor drops in and strikes a chord in the old hunter.





	

Sullen waves crashed over the shore of Old Longfellow's small island, adorned with nothing but a cabin, a shed, an outhouse, and an empty whisky cabinet. A crisp breeze crept over the patch of land away from the larger land mass of the island some hundred metres across calm water. The morning sun was rising in a mostly clear sky. Island locals would say that such conditions were a rarity. Indeed, they couldn't be more right. A new day was dawning for the island. The feud between the coastal settlement of Far Harbor and the militarized cult stronghold of the Children of Atom ended less than twenty-four hours ago, with a bang. The latter's housed nuclear submarine was infiltrated by a shadowy pair – its warhead detonated at sunset. If one didn't know any better, they could say that a second sun accompanied the first in ending the daylight. It was miraculous that the fallout didn't affect the island overnight and to the next morning.

Miraculous – but Longfellow called it a lucky crosswind. He rose the next morning with the call of nature his advanced age gifted him. His younger partner was already awake – an old habit, courtesy of the long-dead United States' Army. Cullen slept on a hammock Longfellow rigged up for him out of an old fishnet. Neither spoke a word after making their escape from the cultists' compound under the cover of dusk and air raid sirens. Their next destination was instinctual, half following each other back to Longfellow's hunting cabin on his island off the shore of Far Harbor. It was a long hike in the dark. He wouldn't admit it, but Cullen would have gotten lost on a few occasions if he didn't have Longfellow's faint scent trail to follow through the fog. His coat's smell of whisky was hard to miss.

Past the cold bite, the air was undeniably fresh. Cullen sat in a lawn chair on the porch overlooking the island and the water. He took a deep breath, shoulders and head back against the nylon, eyes closed, body bundled in his single-sleeved, deep brown duster, American flag scarf, and a knit blanket and tuque. The blue and yellow vault suit he still wore underneath it all was completely concealed. Footsteps crunched over dead grass coming towards him and soon Longfellow lumbered past him. Sporadic sounds of clinking glass could be heard from inside the cabin. Moments later he emerged with a full bottle and glasses in one arm, and a small wooden table in the other that he slid between the two chairs on his porch. Meticulously, slowly, he placed the partially cleaned glasses on the table and poured generous amounts of spirit in each. Finally, he lowered himself onto the other lawn chair in gruff exasperation, exhaling from lungs that should have given out long ago.

“Thought you were out,” Cullen remarked, grabbing his glass in defiance of every piece of time-related drinking etiquette he'd been taught in his youth. “I looked in the cabinet when we got back.”

“Did you check under my pillow?” came the response with a coarsely wheezed chuckle.

The pair sat in silence for several minutes, sipping their liquor. Rays from the sun peeked over the horizon now and gleamed through their glasses. The whisky looked like liquid gold as Cullen poured their second round.

“Well, old man, what's next?” Cullen asked as he downed half of his next glass.

Longfellow shot him a side glance and laughed into a cough. “After what you've seen me capable of, I'm surprised you're callin' me that! Gotta hand it to me, I'm still pretty spry...”

“... for your age.”

The old hunter laughed again. “Can't drop that asshole attitude, can you? That's fine. I think you've earned it.”

“Never took you for one to avoid a question, Longfellow. Less of course, you don't know what to do next,” Cullen took a sip without making eye contact. The smooth curves of the waves was all he wanted to look at.

His observation struck a small nerve in the man. The question wasn't personal. If anything, Cullen's asking proved his concern, given his usual hard demeanour, it shouldn't be taken for granted. Over the last month they've worked together side by side, he had a right to know. You could even call them friends at this point. But what stung wasn't the possibility of opening up, it was that Cullen was right.

“In all my life, revenge was one of those things I seldom experienced. And this...” he shook his head into the rim of his glass.

“... it's not what you expected it'd feel like,” Cullen completed his train of thought. “I know.”

“Not at all,” replied Longfellow in a low tone. “At least the Children can have all the damn rads they want now.”

“Every time they're mentioned, you huff and bitch about them. I picked up on your low-key enthusiasm over the launch codes when we found them. You were fine in Acadia and with DiMA before we found out he'd been in league with them before he wiped his memories,” he paused dramatically and took a sip of 200 year old whisky. “I hate religion. I do. But your beef? That was personal. I can assume what drove you to hate them, but for the sake of closure: why do you hate the Children so much?”

Another stung nerve.

“You're overstepping your bounds, kid.”

“Am I?” Cullen took another swig, a little annoyed at the nickname. “You don't seem like the type to want to die leaving a legacy behind shrouded in unexplained hatred.”

_Oh, he's good._

“I just wanna know where you're coming from – how deeply they wounded you.”

Again, Cullen was right. The Children of Atom took everything but Longfellow's life away from him. His legacy, in particular, was a life-long goal of his. He wanted his life to matter after it ended. He was set – had a sweetheart and a plan, everything. The Children took it all away.

“Love of my life, a woman named Hannah, long time ago – I'd say in my twenties. We had a spot we met up at every so often. One night, the Children jump us, steal her away and leave me for dead.” Longfellow poured his third glass.

“Hate to say it, but I can relate.”

“I ain't done. Took me two months to recover from my injuries and another month to find her. By then, it was too late. They'd already converted her to their ways. The worst part is that it was then I found out she was carrying our child. Unfortunately, all the radiation those psychos worshipped terminated the pregnancy. I've been wanting to wipe them all out for so long now. I really didn't know what I'd do with myself afterwards. I've thought about settling down but that boat left ages ago. ”

Cullen maintained silence in case his guide wanted to add anything more. He didn't, but Longfellow took it as respect, or a minute of reflection.

“Do you think they all deserved to die?”

“Just look at their damn ways, Cullen. They got what they wanted. “The Division.” Pff. We did everyone a favour blowing 'em up, including them. If there were any other way, I wouldn't have given them the satisfaction of a nuclear sendoff.”

“And DiMA? Acadia? Would you have killed them all too?”

Longfellow grimaced. He had nothing against Acadia or synths, however strange he found them to be, except the discomfort of feeling obligated to them for their donation of the fog condensers which kept him and the other islanders alive. Their leader, DiMA, was something else.

“I don't agree with what the fella did. He knows it was wrong, hanging our lives in the balance with that damned wind farm shutdown key. He was right to wipe his memory of it, but how stable do you think he is, knowing all he did about the Children and such? The things he did – replacing Avery? I don't doubt he'll think of doing it again. Some things are unforgivable. Acadia as a whole just wants to be left alone.”

“Maybe we ought to hold him accountable now that his use as a mediator between Far Harbor and the Children is exhausted.”

As Cullen said this, the wind picked up again, colder than the last breeze. The thought put a pause in their conversation. Was that really the right thing to do? How would DiMA react? The pair knew he was a loose cannon. What if Far Harbor found out about his past intentions to wipe them out? About abducting the real Captain Avery, killing and burying her, then replacing her with a synth?

“As much as I want him to answer for his crimes, it ain't a good idea,” mumbled Longfellow, dry lips over his glass. The whisky's burn was becoming dull, his head clearer, wind in his silver beard intensifying.

Cullen looked over at him, a brow raised, mid-sip.

“Allan.”

Right. Allan Lee, Far Harbor's gun shop owner – rash, xenophobic, over-confident and armed – a perfect candidate to raise a ruckus over any offence committed by an outsider. He personifies the extremes of Far Harbor's foreign sentiments, and that was what made him a threat to Acadia. He wouldn't stop at DiMA's persecution. He'd take the trial to all the synth refugees – wasteland justice style.

To boot, most punishments for any crime in Far Harbor was death. It wouldn't be hard to get the rest of the town on board with Acadia's slaughter. Then it wouldn't just be DiMA at the end of a barrel, but all the synth refugees, and Kasumi Nakano, the runaway daughter Cullen was hired to find. She was the one who got him and Longfellow involved in the island's conspiracy. She refused to leave until it was settled. The pair have yet to return the news to her, but they're certain she, and the rest of the island, saw or felt the nuclear blast last night.

A stone's throw away from them behind several downed trees and mounds of soggy earth, something mechanical wound up and machine gun fire quickly followed. A dying roar drowned out in the _thump thump thump_ of the turret Cullen put together from scrap around Longfellow's island with ammo from Far Harbor. Cullen and Longfellow downed the last of their glasses' contents and got up, the latter slower and more laboured, swiping his lever-action rifle from beneath his chair.

“That thing's been real handy, cap'n. The first night we got it running, it took down three gulpers and an angler while you were away. Damn fine work,” the old man admitted. He certainly had his doubts, especially concerning target acquisition. It would sure ruin a good mood to come back during the night only to get fired upon by your own turret. That's what the advanced targeting system Cullen scrounged from a disabled turret on their travels was for. That nifty piece of circuitry only fires on heavily irradiated targets that set off the turret's sensors. Its power generation was quite smart as well, high powered magnets attached to the island's fog condensers. Their motion against the magnets creating energy to be transferred through a relay and buried power line.

“I can't believe you doubted me, old man. But it's weird something would show up right now.”

“Well, I didn't know what you were capable of back then! You're right, though, but it happens. It's rare.”

The pair manoeuvred through the dead tree branches and the mud, under a natural overpass near the front of Longfellow's island leading to the rocky sand bar that connected to the mainland. A young angler was sprawled over the ground a good twenty feet from the turret, caked in blood and mud, barely breathing, its luring antenna dimming. Longfellow quickly waved his arms up and down with a hop forward. The angler didn't budge.

“Yup, she ain't fakin' it.”

Slowing his pace towards it, he cocked his rifle's lever, sending a fresh round in the chamber.

“Damn youngin' too. Never know what they're doing. Wonder where momma is, hmm?”

He approached the wounded abomination, the short stock of his rifle tucked in the nook of his elbow, supported with one hand and pointed to the beast. Cullen leaned on a trunk nearby, hand at the ready by his revolver's holster. The monster wheezed long and soft, not moving, its big narrow eyes trained on the approaching hunter.

“Shhhh... It won't be much longer, girl.”

The angler, twice the size of Longfellow, exhaled again at the touch of a rifle's barrel against its head. Longfellow pulled a cigar from inside his coat and touched it against the beast's flaring, fear-struck bioluminescent antenna. He took a couple puffs and turned his gaze to the mainland across the sandbar. He never told Cullen about his childhood dog. This scene was exactly how he had to put her down when he was a boy no higher than Cullen's knee. Damned thing ran in front a guard post outside of town and was mistaken for a wolf. It laid bleeding out in the mud like the beast before him now. Only difference here was that he wouldn't be burying this girl in a cemetery out in the Fog under an unmarked tombstone adorned with a memorial necklace. It wasn't often he acted like this with his prey, but every so often...

The shot rang out and echoed over the water for what seemed like an eternal few seconds. Longfellow didn't flinch, a cloud of wispy smoke escaping his mouth. Cullen got up and went to check the turret over.

“Ever field dressed angler before?” the hunter called, eyes still on the mainland. His eyes not focused on anything in particular - just looking as if losing function for a minute, or zoning out.

“Nope!” the sniper yelled back, knelt over the ammo box that fed the turret. Count was still good.

Longfellow lifted his rifle to his shoulder and took a long draw of the cigar, puffing the smoke into the wind to carry behind him.

“Well, go get some rope and a couple hooks. I'll show ya,” and a machete too, he thought, turning back to the cabin, his mood a little darker amid the rising sun. There was a bottle to finish.

**Author's Note:**

> The result of momentary inspiration and plenty of midnight oil.


End file.
